Friday 1 April 2011

Blogger Introduces Dynamic Views For Blogs

Blogger have just introduced dynamic views for blogs. By simply adding "/view" (without quotes) to the end of your blog URL, you and your visitors can view your blog in 5 different formats.

Although still in a preview stage and according to the recent post on Blogger Buzz, you'll soon be able to customise the templates and use one of them for your blog. These new views use the very latest in web technology (AJAX, HTML5 and CSS3) to deliver a host of benefits to you and your readers.

Here's the 5 views that's available:

Flipcard: [blogURL]/view/flipcard
Example: http://www.derekjones.co/view/flipcard

Mosaic: [blogURL]/view/mosaic
Example: http://www.derekjones.co/view/mosaic

Sidebar: [blogURL]/view/sidebar
Example: http://www.derekjones.co/view/sidebar

Snapshot: [blogURL]/view/snapshot
Example: http://www.derekjones.co/view/snapshot

Timeslide: [blogURL]/view/timeslide
Example: http://www.derekjones.co/view/timeslide

As these views use the latest in web technology, you will require modern browsers such as Internet Explorer 8+, Firefox 3.5+, Chrome or Safari as many elements of these views will not work in older browsers. You will also need your blog to be set to public and your feeds fully enabled before these views are visible on your blog. For more information, visit the help pages: Dynamic Views for Authors and Dynamic Views for Readers.

At present, these views do not support many of the features your original blog may have, such as the display of advertisements. For this reason, Blogger have provided the option for you to disable dynamic views in your Settings page. They intend to add these missing capabilities over the coming months as well as to let you personalise these views, including providing an option to set a particular view as the default.

With the introduction of these views, it looks as though Blogger are one-step closer to moving towards the new blogging platform (See post: Google Profiles Gone Secure & Blogger Getting A Facelift). However, with these views only in the preview stage, it's hard to tell how they're going to fit within my current blog design...only time will tell :)

What do you think of these new views? Comments welcome.

UPDATE 4TH APRIL 2011: Google have just released a Chrome Extension to support the dynamic views. Once installed, this extension will automatically detect when you are viewing a Blogger blog and then display a Blogger icon (the orange "B") in your address bar which lets you select and view the blog in one of the five new dynamic views. For more information on this, visit the Blogger Buzz post: Dynamic Views, the Chrome Extension.


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Have a fantastic weekend!

9 comments:

  1. Cool! I looked to see if WordPress had an equivalent and, alas, it seems they don't as yet.

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  2. Derek - I saw an update about this in blogger but didn't know how one was supposed to use it. I am so glad I read your post regarding this now : ). Thanks a ton! Will try it out now.

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  3. Thanks Kriti...glad to be of help :)

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  4. I had read this in Blogger Buzz & looked thru the examples. I think they are interesting ideas & I will try them out. I like the improvements they keep making at Blogger.

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  5. Hi! Your blog's been tagged as "Blog of the Week" from 6 April to 13 April. Do keep your great posts coming!
    Cheers - Dora
    http://pandorapoikilos.com

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  6. Wow, thank you so much Dora! I'm so honoured to receive such an award. You've made my day..!! :)

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  7. You know, I saw that, but for some reason, it doesn't work with my blog. Something about the template design. Maybe I need a new design.

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  8. Hi CherylT,

    I've just checked and it's working fine on your first blog (Reckons of Crass Construction) but not on your second blog.

    The reason for this could be because with it being a preview, Blogger are only implementing it on one blog if a user has multiple blogs.

    When the final roll-out is released, then you'll probably find both of your blogs will have this feature.

    Hope this helps :)

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  9. Hi Derek,
    I no longer use Blogger as such for my main blog having moved over the Wordpress. This information is useful to know. I wonder if it will make the new Chrome blog platform more popular and essentially, SEO friendly?

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